Tonight The World Dies (4 page)

His face darkened a bit. “I pray that you never will, Baby.”

It took a while, but I finally became comfortable shooting animals. I started small, with squirrels and quail, unwilling to shoot fluffy little rabbits at first, but working through it all the way to my big bear hunt as a teen. Back home and at the cabin, my Dad and I had a growing collection of taxidermy heads and antlers, our trophies from hunting trips.

I was in high school again, messing around with my friends. Most people were uncomfortable in my house with all the blank, dead eyes from the stuffed heads staring down at them, but Sully, Dean, and Billie were always cool about it. Dean and I were wrestling on the floor of my living room, trying to best each other.

“How do you expect to get on the wrestling team if you can’t even beat me?” I taunted.

“Oh, you are so going down!” Dean said.

“Yeah, right.” I scoffed.

“I play the winner next!” Sully said from the couch.

It took me all of three minutes to pin Dean down. He laughed it off, but I knew he was a bit hurt, having lost to a female.

“Sorry bro, if it makes you feel better, I wasn’t raised like a girl.” I told him.

“Yeah, but I still lost to one.” He said, joining his sister on the couch.

Sully stood in front of me. “You ready?”

“Ready.” I nodded.

We tore into each other. He was stronger than Dean, and a lot more experienced in wrestling and fighting, having three older brothers. Within a few minutes, he was close to pinning me down, so I pulled the dirtiest trick I could think of to distract him: I strained forward under his grasp and kissed him.

It didn’t work out the way I expected. Instead of him loosening his grip enough for me to overpower him, he pinned me flat to the carpet, his body on mine, and returned the kiss.

“You can’t cheat like that.” He whispered. “I cheat back.” He slid off of me, grinning. “Looks like I’m the champion!” He said.

I grumbled at him and hopped to my feet. “I have to admit,” I smiled good naturedly at him. “You beat me fair and square.” I patted him on the back and returned to my spot on the couch, shoving Dean playfully towards his sister to make some room.

The four of us squeezed together on the couch, sweating and tired, to watch a bit of TV before dinner was ready.

Lowe’s, empty and abandoned, or so I thought. The horrible stench of rotting flesh filled my nostrils, making me whip around, horrified of what I knew I’d see. They were all around us, silent and angry, hungry for our flesh. It was like a scene out of a George Romero movie. One of them shambled forward, its eyes faded to a milky white, yet it looked directly at me as it spoke, its words slurring out of its broken, decayed mouth.

“You can’t escape us. You killed our brethren. You shot innocent souls whose on only crime was that they wanted to eat. You must pay for your transgressions against our kind.” It ran toward me, hands outstretched.

I woke with a start, reaching for my gun with a trembling hand before I realized where I was, and why I had woken up. Brethren? Really?

“Jo! Wake up! It’s time for lunch.” Billie called to me from the kitchen.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I said, rubbing my eyes. So much for a peaceful day’s sleep.

I sat through lunch in silence, chewing each bite for as long as I could before swallowing. I didn’t want to talk.

“As much as I love the sound of you not talking, I have to ask: What’s up?” Dean said when everyone else was done and I had only just started eating my cookie, the small stack of crackers reduced to a couple of crumbs on the table.

“Nothing.” I answered.

“If it’s about the zombie thing, just think about it. Say they really can think. That would mean they chose to eat people. They chose to murder people. Us killing them becomes a good thing, because that means they can’t kill someone else.”

I nodded. He was right. “You know, for a moron, you can be rather insightful.”

“Did you just insult me?”

“Why would I do that?” I smiled.

He narrowed his eyes at me for a moment then gave up. Insulting him was too easy. I loved him like a brother, and he was actually fairly intelligent sometimes, but teasing him was far too much fun not to constantly do. But in all seriousness, I was like my father now, unwilling to kill others, knowing full well I could and would should I need to, guilt wrecked about it, but having to soldier on to protect my loved ones. It was me or them, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.

Chapter four

On another lonely road, days after the Lowe’s incident, we pulled to a shuddering stop outside an old fashioned diner.

“Please don’t tell me we have to get parts for this thing,” I said.

“I don’t know, we’ll have to take a look,” Sully said, indicating himself and Dean.

“Alright, let’s clear the place before we start anything else,” I said, frowning.

The place gave me the heebee jeebees. Three of the sides were mostly grime covered windows, with everything below them was metal siding that may have been shiny enough to cook a chicken on in the summer sun back in the day. What little there was in between and above the windows was a dirty robin’s egg blue.

Glancing in the car windows as we passed to the side door, we checked that no zombies were in or around them. Inside, it was incredibly dark for the middle of the day. The dirt and who knows what else layered on the windows effectively blocked out all but tiny slivers of sun.

It was spacious, littered with old plates and cups, a stray corpse lying here and there. It smelled faintly of decay, but mostly of moldy, cooked meat. While the boys checked the kitchen, Billie and I opened all the outer doors to let it air out, and give us better light.

Retching and gagging sounded from the back. We quickly found the boys on their hands and knees near the door to the walk-in freezer, dry heaving.

“You ok?” Billie asked.

“Don’t open the freezer . . . rancid,” Dean wheezed.

“That bad?” I said.

“That was the worst thing I have ever smelled, and that includes that port-a-john in between the taco truck and construction site in Texas.” Sully said between heaves.

I shook my head and walked off to check the bathrooms, leaving them where they sat, still trying not to throw up what little food was in their stomachs.

It was so quiet, and still, I couldn’t help but wonder what we were missing. Twisting the knob, I felt pressure against the door from the inside. The door burst open against the weight of the zombie. I let out a small shriek and slammed my knife into its soft palate, the blade shining through its open, rotted mouth, impaling its brain from near the base of its skull.

Billie rushed around the corner, gun ready.

“What the . . .” She said.

“Don’t shoot,” I panted. “False alarm,”

Billie looked at me wordlessly while I ripped my knife back out of the zombie’s head and wiped the junk off onto the faded and cracked seat behind me.

“I think it might have already been dead,” Billie said with a smile.

“It’s not dead until I kill it,” I said, winking.

And just for good measure, I stomped its head a few times, shattering it.

When we made it back outside, the guys sat in front of the RV, insisting it just needed to cool down, and Billie and I searched the cars more thoroughly, gathering gas, spare parts, and some new clothes. I even managed to find a killer pair of boots to replace my pair that was falling apart

I was going through a duffle bag of random clothes, when I heard a small scuff behind me. Fingers brushed my bare arm, and I jerked away, grabbing for my knife. Spinning, I tripped against a bit of pipe on the ground and landed flat on my rear, only to see Billie laughing evilly a foot away, making choked growling sounds between her chuckles.

“Ha! I finally freaking got you!” She said.

I picked up the pipe in response and whacked her legs lightly a few times.

“Not funny!” I said. “You almost gave me a freaking heart attack!”

“Rawr!” She said, still laughing and holding her hands up like claws, dancing out of swinging distance from me.

I smacked her again and, gathering my things, retreated to the RV, choosing to climb on top of it where there was a small breeze to ruffle my hair.

The pipe I was still holding was jagged on one end, the other smooth and slick. I quickly wrapped the smooth end with a small length of rope to use as a grip, and decided to get to work mending some of our torn clothes.

“Oooooh,” Billie said from behind a car. “Nice,” She held up a silk pillowcase. “Think you can turn it into a shirt?” She asked, looking up at me.

“Toss it up,” I said.

She gathered it into a ball and threw it up. Catching it by a loose corner, I pulled it to me and inspected the fabric.

“Well?” Billie said.

I nodded, and added it to the small pile of sheets and fabric that needed sewing.

Even with the slight breeze, it soon became unbearably hot up there, and I could feel my skin burning so I climbed back down and sat in little shade allotted from the side of the RV, sitting on the bag of fabric to keep myself off the burning asphalt.

Something metal slammed near the engine, and I saw Dean standing, wiping his hands on his pants.

“Dear God, are we actually good to go?” I asked.

“Sully’s starting it now to check,” He said, and right on cue, the engine turned over.

Inside, I pulled Billie into the kitchen area.

“Look, if I really bothered you, I’m sorry,” She said.

“It’s not that. I will get you back, but it’s not that,”

“Then what?”

“We still have those fishing poles,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow, “Ok . . .” comprehension dawned on her face, “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yup,”

“Yes!” She said, grinning from ear to ear and jumping up and down on the balls of her feet.

“What are you two doing?” Dean asked, looking at us from the passenger seat.

“Jo just suggested we break out the fishing poles.”

“Zombie fishing?” He asked.

“Zombie fishing,” I said.

“Alright! Let’s find a good building,” Sully said, immediately scanning the skyline for a decently sized building.

Chapter five

We sat on top of a single story brick building, fishing poles in hand, preparing to begin fishing.

“Ready?” Dean asked.

“Ready,” We all said.

Dean held out a lighter, allowing us to ignite the wicks of our firecrackers. They were the small ones that did too little damage to do any good other than as a distraction. Hurling them to the ground below, we waited, hands over our ears, for the noise to draw in the zombies. The cracking was deafening in the silence.

“Hey Zombies! Over here!” Billie yelled. “Come on you flesh eating freaks, come and get us!”

They trickled toward us in groups of varying sizes, all drawn in by the racket of us screaming and hitting pots and pans, leaving a few firecrackers in a bag in case we needed a distraction later to get away.

We settled onto folded towels under big beach umbrellas we had propped up, and cast our lines, the hooks dangling freely at the height of the average zombie’s head.

“Hey Jo,” Dean said after a while.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You’re the one that suggested this, right?”

“Yes,”

“So you’re over the whole ‘they’re people too,’ thing?”

I let out my breath. I knew this was going to happen, I just wasn’t sure if I had the right words to answer.

“The way I see it, they could still be people. They probably are, in fact. I never had a problem with violent criminals being put down, and life is too damned short already without giving these things a better chance to eat me.”

“So, you’re back to having fun picking them off one by one in as many creative ways as possible?” Billie asked.

“I’m not back to that level just yet, but I’m not going to let it bother me anymore.” The line on my pole tugged and I tugged back, reeling it in. “I got an ear,”

“I think I got a scalp,” Dean said, reeling in a hairy looking clump of grey flesh.

“Tongue,” Sully said. There was a meaty-looking black thing on his hook.

“Whoa,” Billie said, fighting with her pole.

We watched as a decayed zombie head slowly bobbed into view.

“Nice!” We said, high fiving her.

Despite any past feelings, zombie fishing was always fun.

Chapter six

In the middle of nowhere, a few hours before dusk, Sully spotted the truly unexpected: a live person on the side of the road, gathering apples from a tree while two others stood watch, guns in hand. We pulled over and poked our heads out the windows.